


Lost Time

by Saud



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, POV First Person, Post-Episode: s07e05 The Angels Take Manhattan, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 08:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11574213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saud/pseuds/Saud
Summary: After dropping Clara off for Christmas, the TARDIS takes the Doctor to a nursing home. He doesn't know why until he sees a familiar face.





	Lost Time

**Author's Note:**

> The ending of _The Angels Take Manhattan_ never sat right with me. Why didn't the Doctor just go back to the same time but a different place and _drive_ to New York? It felt like Moffat just wanted to write a sad story, logic be damned. The Ponds deserved more than an ultimately empty ending used for tear-manipulation. This fic doesn't change that the Doctor didn't go back for his friends (as I wanted it to be canon-compliant), but it does seek to give the Ponds an ending worthy of them.

Some people wonder why, when I drop my companions home to visit their families, I don't just jump forward a few days in my TARDIS to get them, or even spend some time with them and their families, doing human bonding things like eating dinner and watching tv together. One might think that would minimize the time I have to spend away from my companions, but they would be wrong.

Think about a friend you spend ten minutes with everyday for three years, you'd say your friendship lasted three years. Consider another friend you spend ten minutes a day with every other day for six years, you'd say your friendship lasted six years, though you've spent no more collective time with either of them.

I hate seeing my companions age because it reminds me that they're going to die. Like most people, I hate it when my companions die, because it means I can never see them again. While I can save whole galaxies of people, I cannot save those I love from death.

The bottom line is that I want to spend more time with my companions than their short lives allow, and, with the help of the TARDIS, that is possible. I have stretched friendships out for centuries, like my friendship with the Ponds. I’ve done this by plopping them down into their Earth lives, killing time for a few years, and going back for them a short time after dropping them off. The time between my visits should make it harder for me to notice a new wrinkle here or grey hair there, but invariably my memory is too strong, and no matter how long I am away from a companion, and no matter how hard they try to hide it, I notice their subtlest signs of decay.

In the interest of keeping Clara with me for a few hundred years longer than what her fragile human body would allow, I dropped her off for Christmas with Artie and Angie. She insisted I have Christmas dinner with her, saying she would make a wonderful soufflé, but I refused.

"So you only want to spend time with me while we're being chased by Daleks or the Crimson Horror? Come on, just have dinner with me. I'm sure Artie and Angie would appreciate it as much as me."

 _I want to spend more time with you_ , I thought, _which is why_   _I've g_ _ot to spend some time without you_.

"Sorry; other plans," I said, closing the TARDIS door between us before she could protest further.

I wasn't about to just mope around the TARDIS for a few months. I'm not sure either she or I would like that very much, so I pulled the lever aimlessly, letting her take me wherever she wanted to take me (not that she'd ever done any different), knowing there'd be a fitting distraction, a planet to save or a corrupt empire to dismantle at the destination.

She landed me in a storage closet. As I walked through the labyrinth of white corridors, I realized I was in a nursing home. The more I walked, the more I started to think that this was just a plain old nursing home. It didn't seem to be the base of a murderous extra-terrestrial race. There wasn't so much as a bedpan out of place.

I kept wandering aimlessly along the hallways, looking for anything that was the slightest bit off, because my TARDIS never takes me anywhere I don't need to go.

Just when I was going to trudge back to the TARDIS and ask her if this was supposed to be a joke about my age, I heard a croaking voice come from beyond an open door.

"Doctor?" it asked. I turned my head and there, staring at me, was a pair of green eyes I'd thought I'd never see again.

"Amy Pond!" I shouted, a smile breaking out from ear to ear, "How did you recognize my new face?"

"How did you recognize mine?" she asked.

I laughed but it was true, though her face had changed almost as drastically as mine. Her skin, spotted with age, clung loosely to the bones of her face. Her hair, which once burned copper, was now a cold silver sheet. She was on a bed, half lying, half sitting, propped up by a mound of pillows.

"A Doctor always knows her Pond," I said, putting my hand on hers. I couldn't help but notice how thin and fragile her skin felt, like a sheet of rice paper.

"And a Pond always knows her Doctor," she countered.

I wondered where Rory was. If she was over eighty-two it meant that he was dead.

"If you don't mind me asking, Amy, how old are you now?"

"Didn't your mother ever teach you never to ask a lady her age?"

"No, I can't say she did," I said.

"Eighty-seven," she said.

I tried to hide the chill that ran down my spine as intensely as if an Ice Warrior had touched it. That was the age she died.

"Doctor?" she asked, her eyes as fierce as ever, boring into mine, "Would it be too much to ask for one more trip?"

I gave her hand a squeeze and said, "Anywhere, anytime, you name--"

"I want to see Rory again," she said.

"Oh, Amy," I said, "Anything but that, it could rip time apart."

Then she yanked her hand out from under mine, grabbed me by the shirt collar with a strength that surprised me and sat up straight, pulling me in uncomfortably close, "Listen here, time-boy," she snarled, "You're going to rip time apart for me."

"Okay, fine, alright!" I said, holding up my hands.

"Good," she said, letting me go, and then coughed into her fist.

She settled back onto her pillows and for a minute I thought she'd forgotten about Rory, but I should have known better, because she was Amy, and he was Rory. She'd waited a lifetime for him, and he'd waited nearly two millennia for her.

"We moved to a house in Florida eleven years ago, six years before…” she trailed off. She didn’t have to say what it was six years before; it could only be one thing, but she took a breath and then said in a rush, “Before Rory died.”

She looked away, to the ceiling overhead with its flaking white paint, blinking rapidly to dry the tears shining in her eyes.

“Every Sunday at noon we would go to the store. Then he couldn’t make the trip anymore and I went alone. One Sunday five years ago I came home and the first thing he said was 'Where's the umbrella?' and then I said, 'What umbrella?' and he said, 'You came back shortly after you'd left and said you'd forgotten the umbrella and that it looked like it was going to rain.' I didn't know what he was talking about. For one thing, I hadn't come back until just then, and secondly, it didn't look at all like it was going to rain at all, but I let it go. Later that evening, I made dinner. He barely touched it.”

It was then that her hands clenched so tightly into fists that I was afraid her nails would cut into her palms, “I should have known that something was wrong.”

Her voice cracked on the last word and tears beaded at the corners of her eyes. She shut them, her eyelids wavering, as she inhaled a few shuddering breaths. When she was able to speak again, she opened her eyes, which had gone glossy and bloodshot, and trudged on, her voice broken, “He went to bed early that night, saying he felt exhausted. He died that night in his sleep. I remember the exact moment he'd died. I'd been lying awake, staring at the clock, because I couldn't sleep. I heard his breathing stop at 10:04. I called 9-1-1 and performed CPR, but it was useless.”

Now she was crying for real, her shoulders shaking.

“I should have… tried… harder,” she said in between sobs, “I stopped when I heard his ribs crack,” she shifted so that she was facing me, but I don’t think she saw me through the sheet of tears over her eyes, “I know I shouldn’t have stopped, I should have kept going, and then maybe he’d be here today.”

She stopped, and I thought she'd just been telling that story, but nothing was ever just a story with Amy. She always had a purpose. I stayed silent, watching her chest rise and fall as she breathed, spasmodically whenever her breath hitched in a quiet sob, and eventually she continued, "When he'd mentioned the umbrella I'd thought he was going senile, but now I know what happened, what you're going to allow me to make happen, because on the day of his funeral it was pouring, but when I looked into the closet the umbrella wasn't there. So, here's what you're going to do if you want to keep both your hearts beating, Spaceman.”

Her mouth flattened out into a line, and tears came pouring down her cheeks, “You're going to take me back so I can say goodbye to my husband.” Her words were barely intelligible over her crying.

I nodded, though it didn't matter, for now she was looking at the framed picture of Rory atop her otherwise empty bedside table, not at me. While she was still looking away, I quickly wiped the tears away from my own eyes, and tried to still my quavering lips.

* * *

 

She kicked me out so she could change into the clothes she'd worn on that Sunday five years ago. I was surprised she remembered her ensemble from so many years ago, but Rory had been her life, and I guess it's hard to forget anything about the day you lose your life. I still remember what colour my shoelaces were and the particular stabbing pain I'd felt through my hearts, when I'd been forced to bring about the end of my own people. What many seem to forget is that my family, my wife and kids and grandkids, had been down there, and saving the universe had meant losing them. I still don't know whether it was worth it.

When Amy came out, I tried to focus on her eyes. With age, most people's eyes dull, like the lacquer on a hardwood floor that has seen too many footfalls, but that was not the case with Amy. Her eyes were as sharp as they'd been sixty years ago.  Focusing on them, it was almost easier to delude myself into thinking she hadn't changed at all, the way it's easier for an ant to lift a thousand pounds of sand when a single grain has been removed.

We walked down the hall together and she linked her arm in mine for support. I looked left and right, making sure the coast was clear, before opening the door to the closet housing the TARDIS. As soon as I walked into the closet my arm brushed a mop and it fell onto me. I shoved it away.

Amy laughed. "And I thought you were a mop top before!"

Her smile faded however, as her eyes fixed on the TARDIS, face bathed in the blue glow.

I snapped my fingers. The door swung lazily inward. Amy stepped up into the TARDIS, lingering in her doorway for an instant, liver-spotted hand running down her doorframe.

Once we were both inside she turned and said to me, "It's the same on the outside. Not even a scratch or paint chip."

"She's my only companion that doesn't grow old and leave me," I said, my hand hovering over the lever. That was different. The console changed with me.

"Any second thoughts?" I asked.

"About Rory? Never."

"Well, if I recall correctly, and I think I do, there was this one time...." I trailed off.

"Shut-up," she said, hitting me half-heartedly on the shoulder.

"Well, off we go.”

I pulled the lever.

The TARDIS jostled us around so much that she fell into me and we both went tumbling to the floor.

“Are you okay? Did you break a hip?” I asked.

She elbowed me in the ribs while getting up. I'm not sure about just how accidental it was.

“Are you okay? Did you break a hip?” I asked.

"Make sure he doesn't know it's future you, and remember the umbrella!" I shouted at her as she reached the door.

"This better be the right time, Timelord, or you'll be making a one way trip to Trenzalore."

"Trenzalore? How do you know about that?" I asked as she pushed the door open and the chirping of birds fluttered in.

"River told me," she said, and then, turning back, a smirk on her face, "She tells me everything."

Before I could ask just how much _everything_ was, she was out of the TARDIS, walking along a sidewalk and away from me. After she was a decent distance away, I left the TARDIS to follow her. I know I shouldn't have, and I know it was hypocritical of me, because I would have killed anyone who'd followed me and River to the Singing Towers of Darillium, but, the truth was, I wanted to see Rory too, even if we couldn't talk and he couldn't see me.

Amy watched her old house, crouched behind some bushes, as her past self hugged Rory on her way out the door, and as Rory watched until past Amy was out of sight before going back in and shutting the door -- which I was pleased to see was painted TARDIS blue. I was surprised to see that Rory needed the assistance of a walker to make even these few steps.

Amy waited a moment then hurried to the door, her silver mane of hair streaming out behind her. Once she'd pulled out a key, unlocked the door, and gone inside, I sprinted to the side of the house, pointing my sonic screwdriver at the window and fiddling with it until I could hear as well as see them in the living room.

"Back so soon?" Rory asked from his position in a recliner perched in front of the television.

"No," said Amy, "I forgot the umbrella and it looks like it's going to rain."

Rory turned toward the window and I was forced to duck.

"It looks fine to me."

"I can _feel_ that it's going to rain. Feel it in my bones," she said. I suppose Amy thought this was a typical old person thing to say, but she wasn't very good at acting like an old person, even though she was one. To me it felt like she was still little Amelia Pond in costume makeup.

Rory furrowed his eyebrows, bushier and greyer than the last time I'd seen, but he didn't respond.

She walked over to closet under the stairs, opened the creaky door, and took the umbrella from it. For a few minutes she just stood there with it at her side, watching Rory watch the images flash across the television screen.

She walked toward him and bent down to kiss him goodbye.

Afterward he tilted his head, looking up at her.

"Did you sleep well last night?" he asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"Because, your--" he ran the fingers of one hand along the skin just beneath his eye, but when he saw the way her eyes narrowed he looked like a bug squirming under a magnifying glass, and stopped his words in their tracks, pretending he'd raised his hand to scratch his brow, "because you were tossing and turning."

She smacked him lightly on the shoulder with the hefty black umbrella.

"Liar," she said, smiling down at him, "Well, anyways, I'd better be going," she said. "Goodbye Rory."

"Bye, love."

She turned away from him quickly.

She hurried towards the door and I ran back to the TARDIS before she could see me.

A minute later she knocked on the door and I opened it for her. Once she was inside the TARDIS, she handed the umbrella to me.

"How did it go?" I asked.

As soon as her hands were free of the umbrella, they went up to cover her eyes and she began sobbing.

I put my arms around her in an awkward embrace, still holding the umbrella, and then hers went around me, crushing the air out of me like water from a sponge. We stood just like that for a moment, me patting her back and her sobbing into my shoulder while I cried softly into her hair.

"You know how it went," she said after she'd managed to stop crying, "You were eavesdropping. Rory's hearing was going towards the end. I suppose _he_ couldn't hear the blasted zinging of your sonic screwdriver, but _I_ could."

When she released me from her iron grip, I fell backward into the TARDIS console. I didn't think I'd pressed any buttons, but evidently I had, for the TARDIS began making her noise and soon we were hurtling on a bumpy ride through time and space.

When she stopped, I looked to Amy, "What do you say? Want to see where she's taken us? One last adventure? The Doctor and Amelia Pond?"

Amy frowned, and for a moment I thought she would say no and tell me to take her back to the nursing home, but then she walked over and pulled the doors open, letting in a pleasant warm breeze.

She looked up at the sky and the sun filtered through her hair, making it shimmer as if it were dusted with tiny diamonds. She stepped out onto the sand without saying a word.

I looked up at the TARDIS's screen. Her readings said this planet contained no animal life, and had an Earth-like atmosphere with a slightly-greater-than-Earth Gravity. Setting down the umbrella, I followed her.

I too stared up into the sky. Toward the top it was a rich shade of violet, with wispy clouds lit crimson underneath by the setting suns. The sky looked like a rainbow had bled into it. It ran through the entire visible spectrum of colour, plus some that isn't even visible to humans.

One of the suns was as red as Amy's hair had once been, the other was a bright hard blue. They were both setting over the shimmering waters of a vast turquoise ocean. The sand was a shimmering onyx near where it met the lapping waves below, but approaching the dunes it faded to a chalky greenish-grey. There were so many colours that I didn't know where to look.

The air didn't smell of fish the way most beaches on Earth do. It smelled oddly fragrant, but I suppose that was due to the desert flowers that grew sporadically between the dunes.

Amy plopped herself down in the sand.

"Some _adventure_ ," she said.

I sat down next to her, looking out across the water. It didn't seem like there had ever been animal life on this planet. All the planets with animals have a sort of smoggy funk about them that hangs around for centuries after the animals have gone. It felt powerful to know that Amy's eyes and mine had been the only ones to look upon the majesty of this planet’s dual sunset, our hearts the only ones to beat upon its shores.

"You know, when you showed up at the nursing home, I didn't actually recognize you.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah. I'd called out 'Doctor?' because I'd thought you were actually a doctor, and I'd wanted to complain about the pain in my hip. It wasn't until you'd asked how I could recognize you when your face had changed that I knew who you really were," she said, staring squinty-eyed at the brightly coloured water.

"I thought you'd said a Pond always recognized her Doctor."

"And I suppose that's true, but I'm not a Pond; I'm a Williams."

I smiled, letting my hands sink into the sand. It was the exact colour of River's eyes.

"Amy, I have to wonder... were you and Rory ever able to have any kids after River? I know you wanted a big family"

"No," she said.

"Oh, I'm so sor--"

"Not biologically. We were able to adopt a boy whose birth mother unfortunately named Laszlo, though we moved away to Florida because, you know, that's what old Americans do, and I haven't gotten to see him in years."

 _Laszlo? No, it couldn't be_ , I thought. _It must be a coincidence_.

"The last time I saw him was a month and a half after Rory died. I kept telling him not to come. He was so short on money. It was right before the Depression started. He came to visit me anyway and saw the home in a disarray. I hadn't cleaned since Rory's death. I'd barely been eating. I let him think I was incapable of fending for myself when, in reality, I am, so that he wouldn't have to know I'd simply lost the will to. He argued with me for days, insisting I go back with him to New York, but I refused, saying I was too weak. In a sense I suppose it's true. I was too weak-willed to leave the city Rory and I had spent our last years together in, to go to the one in which he was buried. In the end Laszlo put me in a nursing home with the last of my savings. I didn't protest. At least I didn't have to take care of myself anymore. I thought I would live out the rest of my life without seeing Rory again."

She turned and looked me in the eyes. Neither of us looked away or blinked.

"Thank you, Doctor."

As the last rays of sunlight slipped beneath the waves I put my arm around her shoulder and squished her close to me.

"It was my pleasure, Pond."

"Williams," she corrected.

"Williams," I agreed.

We sat there until the stars came out. There were so many that it looked like salt spilled over a black table. Not only that, but the top half of the Horsehead Nebula, with its brilliant pinks and oranges, was visible in northern sky.

Amy started shivering, so we returned to the TARDIS.

"Where to now?" I asked, hoping she'd say, "Wherever, whenever."

Instead she said "You know where, Doctor."

We landed back in the supply closet of her nursing home, seconds after we'd left.

When she was back laying in her bed, looking pale and exhausted, she said, "Tomorrow is my eighty-eighth birthday, Doctor. You’ve given me the best birthday present I’ve ever received." She stopped, took a few breaths, and then continued, a cold sweat breaking out on her wrinkled forehead. The light from her bedside clock -- reading 9:55 p.m. -- cast her in an eerie green glow over her.

"What did the age on that tombstone say?" She asked.

"Spoilers," I said.

She barked out a laugh, which turned into a wheezing cough,

"I'm sure... that wasn't what it said."

Her eyes fluttered closed and her breathing evened out. For a minute I thought she'd fallen asleep, but then her eyes snapped open, and she said, in the most urgent tone she'd ever used, "Doctor, hold my hand."

I did as she said.

She relaxed back onto her pillow.

"Now tell me a story."

I didn't know what kind of story she wanted me to tell, so I launched into the one that was at the top of my mind, "There once was a young girl with red hair. She had the sauciest Scottish accent. One day this little girl noticed a crack in her wall..." her eyelids drooped closed again, and her hand relaxed in mine. I stopped talking, thinking again that she'd fallen asleep.

"Well, go on," she prompted.

"Oh, okay. Um, and then this mad man fell from the sky and told her he'd be back in five minutes, only he made a slight miscalculation, and was a tad bit late."

The sides of her mouth curled up in a smile.

"But he _did_ come back, and he came back four years after that too, and she ran away with him on the night before her wedding. Then she snogged him! Her own son-in-law!"

This time, when her breathing slowed to a sleep-like rhythm, I didn't stop talking.

"But she and her husband, Rory Williams, loved each other very much, she waited for him and he waited for her, and in the end they grew old together."

Her skin had gone clammy and cold. I saw it when her chest rose and fell, felt it when her heart beat, and when her eyes drifted lazily open, all for the last time.

"And died on the same day, at the same time."

Before taking my thumb and forefinger to close her eyes, I caught a glimpse of them, the only things that hadn't changed about her, and saw that they had now changed. They were now clouded over, staring softly up at nothing.

This is the story of Amelia Williams, the Girl Who Waited.

And this is how it ends.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this fic in October 2013, a few months after Peter Capaldi was announced as the new Doctor. As such I had no idea how his character would act. Editing it today, I re-worded a couple of lines that just didn't sound like him (For example the line where he calmly says "Well, off we go." was originally written "Well, off we GOOOOO!");Tough, when I wrote this originally, I didn't picture Peter as the Doctor in it. In my head it could be any future Doctor, Peter included but not necessarily him.


End file.
